Art Nouveau or Art BS?

What's the definition of intelligence?  Altruism?  How about something we encounter almost everyday - art? I have a hard time putting together definitions/descriptions for these plus countless other things.  Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward said it best in his definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it."  Truly I may not have all the descriptors that would comprehensively define an intelligent perston, but I could surely point one out if I see one.

Does art, good art, also fall into this category of things we recognize when we see it?  Maybe, maybe not.  Bad art, though, I think we can all agree on, surely.

This gem was at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: a piece of stretched canvas that looked like someone sloppily went over it a few times with a black paint roller and then crudely framed it with unfinished wood.

I found a similar piece in the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, though this piece was much larger and evenly coated in black.  I observed a man stare intently at it for what looked like hours.  Is that how it works?  That's how you're supposed to do it?  Like a little monkey, I also stood there and stared (and had my friend snapped my intense gaze)... but alas, it was still just a large piece of canvas covered in black paint, and that was all.

The theme I seem to run across with these is size - the larger the more "art-y"? These were pieces of wood (?) cut in different rectangles and then painted.  How is it modern?  How is it art?  Perhaps the colors have some significance that I don't understand...

... But then, what is the meaning of this little number?  Even without paint it looks like something I could fashion out of construction paper, tape and ruler in a pinch.  Here my friend is straining hard to understand the meaning of the work.

This "installation" was also at the VFMA, simply entitled "Buddha."  The description reads:

Here a stone Buddha head from Indonesia, partially embedded in dirt and signed dramatically across the back by Paik in Chinese and english, appears to observe itself on television.  A live image of the unchanging head is continuously relayed to the monitor by the closed-circuit camera on the tripod.  The Buddha thus generates and receives its own image in an infinite temporal loop, updating the act of contemplation for the age of technology.

No words can adequately describe my confusion for this work. 

This is my favorite piece out of them all, also a hidden gem from the MOMA in SF.  Two blank canvases with a black border.

The importance of the viewer's perception to the asthetic value of a work of art is a signficiant feature of Jo Baer's minimalism and is subtly apparent in this painted diptych.  Narrow black bands of paint trace the edges of both canvases and contrast sharply with the monochromatic white fields, creating painted frames which are themselves shadowed by a thin band of blue.  Sandwiched between the black and white, the blue flouresces, making the black blacker and white whiter.  Through this gestait effect viewers are made aware of how their optical experiences contribute to the physical presence of the painting.

Whaaaa???  Two blank canvases bordered by black and blue.  Seriously, how is this considered art, and modern art at that?  Is it modern because it's blank, and no one expects modern art to be blank?  It seems almost like size is the only determining factor in what makes it "art" - would I also be able to "show" in an art museum if I had enough money to buy two enormous blank canvases?  What optical experiences am I supposed to have?  And what is the physical presence of the painting other than comedy for someone like me or resentment for some bloke who had to pay to see this?

With no art training, crude tastes and a inclination for pragmatism, I am the first to plead ignorance in art museums.  I know there people who "get" these paintings - like the man lost in thought at the black canvas.  Perhaps I should've asked him for his insight - maybe I would've learned something, or maybe I would've face-palmed in front of him.  Perhaps it was wise to not take that chance then and there.